Andrés Gómez Emilsson | Response to "The Hedonistic Imperative is Just Brave New World" @/Andr%C3%A9sG%C3%B3mezEmilsson | Uploaded August 2022 | Updated October 2024, 2 hours ago.
N1 - This is basically “Brave New World’.”
(On the Hedonistic Imperative Responses Bingo - hpluspedia.org/wiki/Responses_to_the_Hedonistic_Imperative_Bingo)
Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley was carefully crafted to make you experience disgust. If you think about it, there are trillions of conceivable blueprints of genetically-driven paradises. Why get fixated in this one in particular?
Huxley merely visualizes a future in which dumb-drug Soma keeps people happy with the status quo, society has been stabilized via a status hierarchy embedded in one’s genes and early conditioning, and other repulsive features. He does not, however, at any point, rigorously argue for the *necessity* of the connection between universal happiness and a world akin to the one he describes.
The Hedonistic Imperative does not logically entail a particular socio-economic or political system. That said, in practice, making happiness universally accessible is far more compatible with individual freedom and responsibility than a top-down totalitarian system: it is usually depressives who exhibit submissive social behavior. Alphas, by and large, tend to both be happy, and signal happiness (with myriad caveats and corner cases, but you see what I mean).
See David Pearce’s devastating critique of Brave New World: huxley.net
The Hedonistic Imperative - hedweb.com
And Eliezer Yudkowsky’s clever essay “The Logical Fallacy of Generalization from Fictional Evidence”: lesswrong.com/posts/rHBdcHGLJ7KvLJQPk/the-logical-fallacy-of-generalization-from-fictional
N1 - This is basically “Brave New World’.”
(On the Hedonistic Imperative Responses Bingo - hpluspedia.org/wiki/Responses_to_the_Hedonistic_Imperative_Bingo)
Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley was carefully crafted to make you experience disgust. If you think about it, there are trillions of conceivable blueprints of genetically-driven paradises. Why get fixated in this one in particular?
Huxley merely visualizes a future in which dumb-drug Soma keeps people happy with the status quo, society has been stabilized via a status hierarchy embedded in one’s genes and early conditioning, and other repulsive features. He does not, however, at any point, rigorously argue for the *necessity* of the connection between universal happiness and a world akin to the one he describes.
The Hedonistic Imperative does not logically entail a particular socio-economic or political system. That said, in practice, making happiness universally accessible is far more compatible with individual freedom and responsibility than a top-down totalitarian system: it is usually depressives who exhibit submissive social behavior. Alphas, by and large, tend to both be happy, and signal happiness (with myriad caveats and corner cases, but you see what I mean).
See David Pearce’s devastating critique of Brave New World: huxley.net
The Hedonistic Imperative - hedweb.com
And Eliezer Yudkowsky’s clever essay “The Logical Fallacy of Generalization from Fictional Evidence”: lesswrong.com/posts/rHBdcHGLJ7KvLJQPk/the-logical-fallacy-of-generalization-from-fictional
